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D-Link DGL-5500
11/10/2013

Pros:

The router comes with lots of bells and whistles. Some, not so necessary. For the good:> 4 Gigabit ports + Gigabit WAN port> Wireless N + AC (Only 1300Mbps)> 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz radios> Fairly good range on both bands> Easy to configure cloud based QoS system> Comes with good user manual and setup is easy> Somehow eye pleasing design. Vertical stand reduces the footprint of the device. (see cons)

Make sure you update Firmware often, as it seems that D-Link is constantly tweaking the QoS functionality for the router.

Cons:

After reviewing few networking products from D-Link, it seems to me that they are over-doing things. With this particular model here are the things that I find as negatives:

> Router has a very sleek, vertical design as you can see on the stock photos. There is two major problems with that. First of all when in real life you connect a cat6 cable to all 5 ports on the back of the router and a stiff USB cable to the port located high on the back, there is no way that the router will be standing up as designed. More likely it will be tipping over or will be hanging in a n awkward position on the Ethernet cables. This could be easily fix with adding some weight on device base to make it more stable. Second problem with the device would be the finish of almost entire casing. It is so shiny it's almost making me sick when I see all the fingerprints and dust specks on it.This is such common problem with this kind of equipment that it makes me think that design teams for this hardware never leave sterile laboratory environments. In real life this kind of finish on every-day use equipment just does not work.

> The newly designed QoS system that the router is strongly advertised for is ... well just good. It does most of the job for you and it is really great that it reassigns bandwidth on the fly to different devices. Although this functionality, in my eyes, is not enough to charge such a premium for a router that does not offer top-of-the-line specs in other categories.

> Range on the router was fairly good, until I have changed it orientation from vertical to horizontal (due to it tipping over all the time). Then the range dropped drastically, which makes me think that there is omnidirectional antennas installed vertically inside the casing. Not a big deal, just fix the design flaw and add some weight to the device D-Link for it to work as designed.

> The router comes with multiple stickers, cards and even permanent prints on the router that tells you the DEFAULT login, password, SSIDs and those passwords. The bad thing about it, who is going to keep all those default values??? As soon as you are done with configuring the device 15 into owning it, all those become trash. Just put all the default values in the user manual, and save all the rest D-Link.

> Last thing to point out that seems obvious, is that the maximum wireless bandwidth of the router is 1300Mbps. For the price this should be not less than 1750Mbps which is a current top speed offered by top of the line routers on the market.

Other Thoughts:

I am reviewing networking products on a regular basis, sometimes testing of the device takes hours, sometimes few days. I find newly developed features interesting or annoying.I can tell you that every time I am done testing for a review, I am happy to go back to my trusted RT-ac66u accompanied by two RT-n66u's configured as wireless bridges. This hardware is rock solid and lacks in annoying features and design flaws that seems to be ever existing issue for all other new devices coming to the market.

Manufacturer Response:

We want to thank you for submitting this information as we truly value your input on our products. D-Link is sorry to hear that the DGL-5500 features and style did not meet your expectations. We are striving to create the best setting options and features available. Your feedback is very much appreciated and will be passed along to our Product Management team for future consideration. We hope that you will try many of our other products and look forward to doing business with you in the future.

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